Mankind has invested more than four million years of evolution in the attempt to avoid physical exertion. Now a group of backward-thinking atavists mounted on foot-powered pairs of Hula-Hoops would have us pumping our legs, gritting our teeth, and searing our lungs as though we were being chased across the Pleistocene savanna by saber-toothed tigers. Think of the hopes, the dreams, the effort, the brilliance, the pure force of will that, over the eons, has gone into the creation of the Cadillac Coupe de Ville. Bicycle riders would have us throw all this on the ash heap of history.

Civilization is an enormous improvement on the lack thereof.

You can't get rid of poverty by giving people money.

The motorcycle is a device created by the team of God and Darwin to rid the world of useless young males.

Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper.

If I bring anything to the table, it's the fact that not everybody realizes they're funny. So I just point a finger.

The great thing about being a print journalist is that you are permitted to duck. Cameramen get killed while the writers are flat on the floor. A war correspondent for the BBC dedicated his memoir to 50 fallen colleagues, and I guarantee you they were all taking pictures. I am only alive because I am such a chicken.